Re: First report on Conm

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>:

>
> I'm hearing so much different figures on this that I can only conclude
> that
> definitions vary wildly. The last bigger thing on this I read claimed
> that
> something like 1-2% of the world's population was ambidextrous, 10-20%
> left-
> handed and the rest right-handed. Oh, and it's authors'd probably
> considered "ambidextrous people with more or less inclination toward
> left or
> right" to be contradiction in terms.
>
That's because the idea that lateralisation is a continuum is not widely
accepted. The same problem as with sexuality (being both left-handed and gay, I
am painfully aware of the similarity between the oppression of both
communities - and if you find "oppression" to be to big a word, I'll just
remind you that I come from a country in which you still find teachers who,
when they see a child using his left hand to write, punish him severely,
sometimes physically, and oblige him to use his right hand. Luckily, they are a
dying minority now, but thirty years ago they were the norm -).

> How strongly right/left-handed count as "fully" to get your numbers?
Quite strongly actually.

> Would the
> fact that I can operate my mobile phone with my left hand make me
> ambidextrous
> by your definition?
No.

 Infact, I can probably make most things I can with
> my
> right hand with my left one, except writing and doing things requiring
> my full
> right-handed strength, only like ten times slower and more
> inefficiently; I've
> never met anyone who's thought that make me anything but perfectly
> right-
> handed.
>
And I think they are right. Still, when you take this definition, you get my
figures, not anybody else's. Ambidextry is more pervasive than it seems,
because it's usually invisible.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.

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